The Penny Bangle (17 page)

Then he lit a welcome cigarette, inhaling deeply, and began to make his way back to the British camp.

Earlier that day, his men had been attacked by German Stukas dropping bombs on them and on some London Irish, who were next to them in line. The planes had killed four Royal Dorsets, and wounded seven more.

The British anti-aircraft guns in batteries further back had brought a couple of German bombers down, but now the British guns were silent. So what were they doing? What was going on?

As so often happened, he didn’t know and wasn’t likely to find out. All he and his platoon could do was lurk here like a nest of new-born leverets, ill-concealed amidst the vegetation, hoping a fox or eagle in the shape of a Stuka wouldn’t spot them and swoop down on them.

As he made his way back down the hill, he passed a couple of Arab homesteads, which had been shelled and burned by enemy fire. Some Highlanders were using one of the houses as a makeshift operations post, and they had trashed the place, destroying the little garden round the house, and using all the furniture for firewood. As a farmer’s son himself, he pitied the Arab farmers who’d got caught up in this, who’d had their land invaded by columns of men in khaki and their war machines, who’d had their livestock killed and crops destroyed.

He scratched an insect bite that had made one arm swell up, so now the skin was red and tight and shiny. He ought to go and see the medical officer, he supposed. In this awful climate, almost every scratch or bite was liable to go septic. So maybe he should get a shot of something.

‘You all right, Mr Denham?’ asked Robert’s middle-aged sergeant, who had come to look for him.

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ said Robert, slithering down the last few feet of scree. ‘Did you get the wounded men away?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘They’ll be at the aid post now. We buried all the other poor bastards down there in the valley.’ He glanced up at the hill. ‘See anything up there, sir?’

‘They must be directly opposite, but they’re jolly well dug in and hidden. They had a pop at me.’

‘You take too many risks, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘I know you’re bored, but there’s no point in going looking for trouble, if you don’t mind my saying.’

It’s better to go and look for it before it comes to look for you, thought Robert, but he didn’t say. Sergeant Gregory was a conscientious NCO who wanted to get as many men as possible through this and home again. Robert had the same intention, but – as his sergeant realised – he was bored. He wouldn’t have minded action now and then.

The African night descended like a black velvet curtain embroidered with a million little stars. Once in a while, a few white shells burst overhead, adding to the brilliance above. Robert and his platoon were all in trenches, as they’d been for nearly two weeks now. Bored out of their minds, but sometimes getting scared out of their wits, they waited for an order to advance, retreat, do something, anything.

Robert put a third of the men on guard. The others dozed, wrote letters, cleaned their rifles, smoked, played cards and brewed up endless cans of tea on little fires. The stars shone bright, so bright that it was possible to read.

But no one felt like reading.

The sergeant sat on a pile of kitbags, staring into space.

‘You seem a bit distracted, sergeant,’ Robert said, hoping his sergeant wasn’t getting wind up, because he was an excellent NCO, if a bit outspoken on occasions.

‘Just had a letter from back home, sir,’ said the sergeant, as he stared into the fire. ‘Our eldest daughter, Nell – she’s misbehaving, hanging around with spivs and undesirables, and her sisters always copy Nell. The missus doesn’t know what to do. So she wants me to sort it out. As if I can do anything out here.’

‘You could write to Nell, perhaps?’ said Robert. ‘I don’t mean any stern, Victorian father kind of stuff. But ask her to keep her mother’s spirits up, remind her she’s the eldest, and she needs to look out for her sisters – that should bring her to her senses.’

‘You reckon, sir?’ The sergeant grimaced, shook his greying head. ‘You’re not married, are you, sir?’ he asked.

‘No,’ admitted Robert.

‘Got a girl, sir?’

‘Yes.’ At the thought of Cassie, Robert smiled. He was so glad they’d had the chance to meet again before he’d come to Africa, glad they’d had their walk together, glad they’d sat companionably in that Surrey pub, and glad they’d had a chance to kiss goodbye.

He shouldn’t have let her drink so much the night they were in London. Poor Cass, she’d been so ill. He’d never seen anybody be so sick.

He had two letters in his pocket which he hadn’t opened yet. One of them was from Stephen, and the other was from Frances. He might as well glance through them, he supposed. He hadn’t anything else to do.

He opened the letter from his brother first, and what he read there made him catch his breath.

‘Something wrong, sir?’ asked his sergeant, looking at him, concerned.

‘My – my father’s dead.’ As the initial shock wore off, Robert took a few deep breaths, and eventually he felt his heart slow down and the life blood flow back into him.

As he’d started reading Stephen’s letter, and saw his brother said he had bad news, he’d dreaded it would be Cassie who was hurt – or had even died.

Now he felt very guilty because he was relieved.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the sergeant said, sounding as if he meant it. ‘It’s hard, to lose somebody back at home, while we’re stuck over here.’

‘Thank you,’ Robert said. ‘But Dad was ill,’ he added. ‘We’d been expecting it.’

Later, he forced down steak and kidney pudding they’d boiled up in a tin, then tried to snatch some sleep.

He drifted in and out of consciousness, dreaming of when he was a little child, of when they’d lived in India, and of his father teaching him to ride.

Of summers in the Himalayan foothills, where he and his brother and their father had gone on exciting, all-male expeditions. Of his big sister Daisy, pirouetting round their bungalow in a new white frock made for an engagement at an army garrison theatre, where she invariably stole the show.

When he woke up he realised there were tears in his eyes. How would his mother cope, he wondered? She and his father had always been so close, so very much in love, so how would Rose survive a loss like this?

He got up, walked around the camp, talked briefly to the sentries he had posted earlier, smoked a couple of very unpleasant Libyan cigarettes, and then lay down again.

Soon, he was dozing fitfully, and dreaming he was in an army lorry and driving down a street in some strange city full of towers and domes – Delhi, it might have been, or possibly Bombay.

Then he saw Cassie wearing Daisy’s cocktail dress, silver shoes and heavy, mask-like make-up, looking like she’d looked that night they’d all gone out in London.

But she wasn’t in Daisy’s flat, or at the Florida or the 400. She was standing in the doorway of a bombed-out building with men in cheap but flashy clothes, men who looked like spivs, and she was laughing. He could hear the crump of falling bombs, but she was obviously having a good time.

One of the spivs was hugging Cassie round the neck, and he had Stephen’s face.

Cassie passed a few more driving tests for different kinds of vehicles. She was rewarded with a second stripe. She thought, if only Robert would come home, life couldn’t get any better.

Of course, things could be better generally. The Allies could actually defeat the Germans and Italians. But that was bound to happen some day, surely? Now the Americans had come in on the Allies’ side?

But when the war was won, things would go back to normal. There’d be no excitement, everything would be dull again, and she’d go back to Smethwick.

She’d be a shop assistant, cleaner, factory worker, making or packing sweets or cigarettes. Or she’d work in the local Chinese laundry, like she had when she’d left school, where her hair would go all lank and frizzy in the steam, where her hands would end up red and roughened, where she’d be shouted at by Mr Wong.

Or she’d get married to some local boy, a grown-up version of a snot-nosed kid who’d shared her desk and pulled her hair and pinched her black and blue at St Saviour’s Elementary School. She’d live in a little terraced house like Lily Taylor’s, have half a dozen wailing brats, get stretch marks, piles and possibly a prolapse, and all the other gruesome female ailments which the married women talked about as they came home from church.

She was now a corporal. One day, she might make sergeant, then she could boss the likes of vile Lavinia and Antonia about. She didn’t want the war to end just yet.

Frances wrote to tell her Mrs Denham’s husband had just died, so Cassie put in for a pass to go to Mr Denham’s funeral. She got a lift to Dorchester, and then she caught a bus to Charton. When she arrived at Charton’s little honey-coloured church, she saw it was packed with people from the village, many of them in tears.

Stephen and Fran had both got leave, and Daisy came, of course. But Ewan couldn’t make it – he was touring somewhere in the Midlands, Daisy told them, organising ENSA shows for troops.

‘I’m so glad you could come, my little sparrow,’ Daisy said to Cassie. ‘It means a lot to Mum, to see so many people here.’

Daisy was looking very glamorous in a black wool suit, black furs, gleaming black high heels, and a black velvet pillbox hat trimmed with black ostrich feathers. But when she put her veil up, after they’d had the service and filed out of the church to watch the actual burial, Cassie saw Daisy’s face was streaked with tears, that her black mascara had pooled in purple puddles, and that her nose was running like a child’s.

While Mrs Denham stood dry-eyed and sorrowing, like an image of the Virgin, Daisy cried and cried.

‘I’m so sorry, Daisy.’ Cassie didn’t know what to do or what to say in the face of such tremendous grief. ‘He was nice, your dad,’ she added, lamely. ‘He was always very kind to me.’

‘He was k-kind to everybody, Cassie, that’s why everybody loved him,’ Daisy sobbed, and then burst into storms of tears again.

‘Come on, Daze, old girl.’ Stephen looked pale and wretched, but he was not yet in tears. He put his arm round Daisy’s waist, and let her rest her head against his shoulder. ‘Remember you’re a soldier’s daughter, eh?’

‘Y-yes, I know,’ sobbed Daisy. ‘D-dad would be ashamed of me, carrying on like this. He’d tell me to brace up, shoulders back, and all that sort of thing.’

She rummaged in her handbag, found her little golden compact and put some dabs of powder on her nose. ‘My God, I’m going to look a fright this evening,’ she continued, patting with a little lace-edged hankie at her red and swollen eyes.

‘You should have let your understudy go on, and stayed with Mum tonight.’

‘Well, I did think about it.’ Daisy tried to smile. ‘But Dad would have told me to get on with it, play up and play the game. I’m not due on stage for ages, anyway. I’m in variety at the Theatre Royal tonight, and I’m on at nine.’

‘Cassie, would you like to stay the night?’ Mrs Denham left a group of villagers who had all been offering sympathy, and now she walked up to her son and daughter. Cassie saw she hadn’t slept, that there were big, black circles underneath her tired, grey eyes, and she was as pale as death herself. ‘You could have Stephen’s room – he’s going back tonight.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Denham.’ Cassie watched the final mourners hurrying away. It seemed there was to be no funeral supper, no going back to the bailiff’s cottage for sandwiches and cake. Stephen had said his mother couldn’t face it.

‘I’ll cook the evening meal,’ said Cassie, ‘and I’ll help Tess and Shirley with the evening milking.’

‘Bless you, Cassie dear,’ said Mrs Denham, then her shoulders slumped and she began to cry.

Cassie went with Frances, Stephen and Daisy to the station. Tinker had decided to go with them, and now he was nosing in the dry, brown bracken, and sniffing dozens of exciting smells.

Stephen still looked white and miserable, and Cassie hoped he wouldn’t have a turn. She remembered Mrs Denham saying strong emotion sometimes brought them on.

‘I’ve volunteered to go to abroad,’ she told them, as they waited for the London train.

‘Oh?’ said Frances, and now she looked astonished. ‘What does your granny think of that?’

‘I haven’t told her yet.’

‘Where exactly do you hope to go?’

‘The other drivers reckon they might send us to North Africa,’ Cassie replied, and then she shrugged. ‘We’d be based in Egypt, but then we could be sent to Libya. Or even Palestine.’